Games: Agency As Art (Thinking Art)

Games are a unique art form. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be and what to care about during the game.Game designers sculpt alternate agencies, and game players submerge themselves in those alternate agencies.Thus, the fact that we play games demonstrates the fluidity of our own agency.We can throw ourselves, for a little while, into a different and temporary motivations.This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on their unique value.C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part our systems of communication and our art.Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning.Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games.When we play games, we can pursue a goal, not for its own value, but for the value of the struggle.Thus, playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life.We adopt a